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Monday, 10 March 2008

Where Do You Live?

It occurred to me that this might be a useful question at this point, if you've been following along with the discussion for the past several days. There's an old expression that I think goes, "That hits me where I live." As I understand it, the expression refers to something the appeals to you directly and viscerally, that you admire most of all, that you find most nourishing to your enthusiasm. Something you might also say "I'm a sucker for." (Pardon my clumsy blundering about, but I think it bears defining.)

As a music listener, for instance, what "hits me where I live" at the moment is Bluenote-label jazz from the 1950s. Can't get enough. (When I was in grade school it was the Beatles, in college it was Neil Young, and for a while in my 30s it was Trevor Pinnock and other Baroque music on period instruments.) Note that these are not value judgments for anybody else. Maybe, for somebody else, where they live might be big-hair rock from the '80s, or Barry Manilow, or the Three Tenors. I have an older friend who loves big band. My son's uncle when I knew him was crazy about the Beastie Boys. For my friend KK I suspect it is the Velvet Underground. But don't most listeners have some artist or other that is right at the core of their love for music, the one that speaks to their heart most easily, the last band they'd want to give up?

Where you live—it's something you just love out of proportion, the thing you'd take to the desert island, the thing you return to again and again, the thing that grounds you. The thing you have a weakness for.

So—photographically, where do you live?

Always dangerous speaking for others, so this is just provisional, but I'll go out on a limb and say that for Ctein, "where he lives" photographically speaking is 6x7 color negative film and 16x20 dye transfer prints (which you can arrange to see if you're in the San Francisco area, by the way). Better hear that from him, though.

For me, the style of photography I simply love best—where I live—is documentary style 35mm B&W. For a superb example, take a look at the Turnley twins' McClellan Street in the new issue of the Digital Journalist. Ambitious to become photojournalists, the brothers just went out and shot their own neighborhood, practicing their craft, warming up. McClellan Street happened to be where they lived. What resulted was a set of simple, honest, straightforward pictures that reek of life. They couldn't be more beautiful.

This is one of those projects that just make me want to hang it up,
because I know I'll never do better. For me, stuff like this is as good
as photography gets. There's a book, too. I'll have to get it, that's all there is to that. Might as well drop the bucks right now and not worry about it.

Peter Turnley on McClellan Street, Fort Wayne, mid-'70s

...and gettin' nailed.

Check out the portfolio. (There are always good portfolios at the Digital Journalist.) I notice, too, that the Digital Journalist is continuing the site redesign that they started last month. "From now on, we will be presenting HD videos prominently in our features," the new newsletter says. If you don't have the DJ bookmarked, you should. My friend Pierce writes a column there. This month's is about Leica.

And speaking of videos—this isn't really off-topic—go to YouTube.com and search "Jeff Mermelstein Media Matters." Look for parts 1a, 1b, and 2. The videographers just couldn't resist the Ken Burns disease, zooming in on and panning around within still images, which I (you guessed this, right?) can't stand. But, Mermelstein: I like the guy. He seems almost a little Asperger-ish, he's so focused. I admire that.

This is "Random Excellence" for this week, by the way. Although it's not really very random (the Turnleys and Mermelstein are at the top of the game).

______________________

Mike (Hat tip to Kent Phelan and Tom Kaszuba)

Featured Comment by Chris: "Where do I live? While I've ventured into several neighborhoods of photography, the one that keeps calling me back is railroad photography. I'm not talking about the roster-shot cult, either.

"The late Gary J. Benson wrote a book called The Art of Railroad Photography and it truly was a life-changing book for me. Previously, I had been content to stand at grade crossings and shoot the 'wedge' that is the mainstay of many rail photographers (and accounts for about 90% of Lucius Beebe's shots from what I can tell). The wedge is appropriately named. Basically it's a shot with a 50mm (in 35mm terms) taken at a 3/4 angle that causes the train to look like a wedge. It can feature other elements, but is generally a shot of the train (especially the locomotives).

"After reading Mr. Benson's book, several new worlds opened to me, but the greatest was the concept of the 'Trainscape.' Roster shot wedges are okay but they don't tell much of a story. Learning to feature trains in the environments in which they work is a great way to liven up a railroad shot.

"This past weekend I was out railfanning on the Limon Sub. of the Union Pacific which runs east of Denver. The line was originally part of the Kansas Pacific. While it lacks the scenic majesty of the Moffat Sub. which tunnels through the Rockies, the old KP has a charm all its own. The plains are beautiful in a rugged sort of way. It was truly a challenge to feature the trains in this environment in a meaningful way.

"In addition to the concept of the trainscape, Mr. Benson also taught me that railroading extends beyond the world of locomotives. Most railfans are content to happily shoot their grade crossing wedgies of the locomotive. Getting a good shot means getting a rare locomotive more than anything else. Beyond locomotion, though, is a rich, fascinating industry of equipment, environments and people! One of my biggest goals lately has been to add the human element to my railroad shots.

"All this had added up to an addiction. I truly can't wait to get out and shoot more train shots. My 'physical neighborhood' allows me to follow this pursuit of my 'photographic neighborhood' wonderfully. Colorado offers many great railroad opportunities.

"In addition to mainline action throughout the state, we also have several tourist operations. With operations like the Durango and Silverton; the Cumbres and Toltec; the Georgetown Loop; the Leadville, Colorado and Southern; the Colorado Railroad Museum; and the San Luis and Rio Grande (all but one of which operate photogenic steam locomotives) the railroad photographer has some amazing photographic possibilities. Add in mainline steam events by the Union Pacific's mammoth locomotives and it's about as perfect a place as railroad photographer could ever live.

"Of course, my neighborhood comes complete with neighbors, as well. When I'm not out taking railroad photos, I truly enjoy immersing myself in the work of others in my neighborhood. Perhaps my favorite way to spend a quiet evening is paging through the books by Don Ball, Jr. (I have all of them). In addition to his own great photographs, Mr. Ball also included the work of some truly great railroad photographers like Jim Boyd, T.J. Donahue, O. Winston Link, etc. Beyond those greats, I've also really come to enjoy the work of other greats like Richard Steinheimer, Mike Danneman, Brian Solomon, etc.

"It's been a fascinating journey, and as enjoyable an addiction as one could 'suffer' from. I'm glad you posted this piece, Mike. I can't wait to read some of the other responses. There have to be some other fantastic 'neighborhoods' out there!"

Mike replies: You're lucky to have a subject you're that passionate about. I worked for a model railroading magazine briefly and helped judge their annual railroad photography contest one year (I still have Gary Benson's book, too)—it's a challenge all right, not as easy as it looks.

Speaking of the human element, south of town we have a long approach where the tracks don't block traffic anywhere (it passes under the main girdling road, Rt. 59). I'd noticed that long trains sometimes pause there, just short of the first signal. I never knew why they stopped—I assumed it was to adjust their timing to get back on schedule or something. One day I happened to see an approaching train slowing as it neared the crossing, so I swung the car into a nearby lot and hopped out with my camera, thinking to get a shot as it passed. I waited for the train, but it slowed to a stop well short of the crossing.

Then I noticed one of the two engineers hop out of the cab and start walking briskly away from the train. I was curious, so I just hung out and watched. Well, he disappeared into the nearby strip mall for a while. The train waited. A little while later he came striding back—carrying a couple of bags from McDonald's! He swung himself back up into the cab, and they fired 'em up again and off they went.

So that was it! Somewhere I have a shot of an idling locomotive straight on, headlamp blazing, with that guy climbing back into the cab with his and his buddy's lunch.

Featured Comment by All Day Breakfast: "I'm a sucker for photographing quirky looking trees in an urban environment, tall mundane buildings which rise above non-descript urban settings like monoliths, You Are Here signs and the spaces between dwellings. This has been going on for about a year. I photograph other things too of course but I get really excited when I 'see a good one' of one of the above. (FWIW you can see more examples here.)"

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "I've always loved the perfectly rendered intimate color landscape, ever since stumbling across Robert Glenn Ketchum's book The Hudson River and the Highlands twenty years ago. I signed it out from the library so frequently I was on a first-name basis with the staff. (I finally bought my own copy). Christopher Burkett's work has the same flavor, depicting a single tree as a little corner of heaven. I presume this type of image captivates me because it matches the human scale of things here in the East, in contrast to the monumental Western 'big sky' landscape. Over the last couple of years my own work has evolved to stitched panoramics printed large, so that standing in front of the print distills my sense of what it looks and feels like to stand in a hushed forest quietly enough to hear the small critters going about their business. I can't get enough of 'em.

"Music? that would be the Jayhawks, with a side-order of GooGoo Dolls. The Jayhawks for their witty lyrics and harmonies, and because my kids hate 'em; all I have to do is put on a CD, and they flee the room. Ah, solitude. The GooGoos because I grew up in Buffalo, and know exactly what 'Broadway' is about. I've been in those bars."

Ernest Theisen, Steps to the Cross, bromoil transfer print

Featured Comment by Ernest Theisen: "I live with pictorialists from way back in time to today and with Zeiss Ikon folders and with Kallitype chemicals and with lithographic ink, and with folks like these."

Comments

Born in the early 1970', you could probably say I'm stuck in the past in some ways - 60's Dylan on vinyl and a fridge full of b+w film would accompany me to the desert island!
Photographically my favourites change all the time as I learn more and more about the subject, Garry Winogrand to Michael Kenna being current favourites in the street and landscape disiplines. Man Ray and Bill Brandt have been long time influences, while currently I love the colour square landscapes of Mike Stacey. These things are subjective though, and if they didn't change, life would become boring! Dylan hasn't changed in a while though ...

I'm a sucker for figures in desolate landscapes. Thanks to the miracle of Pocket Wizards I can make these as self-portraits of sorts, which I freely admit is over-the-top indulgent. As the Woody Allen line goes, "I was born into the Catholic persuasion but later converted to narcissism."

I saw the McClellan Street photos recently at the Leica Gallery in New York. Fantastic stuff.

The most remarkable thing I learned -- maybe I simply mean the most deflating thing to my ego -- is that the brothers were no more than 18 years old when they took these pictures. The images certainly speak of a wisdom far beyond that ordinarily possessed by teenagers (or by MFAs in their 20s for that matter).

I don't know what the brothers have produced since then, however. Do photographers always improve with age & experience? I doubt it in this case, but maybe I should do a google search for their more recent work ....

I believe that this is a situation where a photographer may have many different homes. I do not think that I live at only one address. Nor do I belive that others do. You used Ctein as an example conjecturing that he lives in 6x7 color negatives and dye transfer prints. No doubt do I have that he also lives with a perfectly good view of b&w prints and tmax 100 and 3200. He lives in the home of a photographic craftman that has at the least more than 1 room.

I'm a sucker for photographing quirky looking trees in an urban environment, tall mundane buildings which rise above non-descript urban settings like monoliths, You Are Here signs and the spaces between dwellings. This has been going on for about a year. I photograph other things too of course but I get really excited when I "see a good one" of one of the above. (fwiw examples are at http://www.curiouslyincongruous.net)

4x5 b&w txp320 and off into the landscape. Adams' books showed me what could be done, but the intimate landscape — human scaled — appeals to me more than the epic. Small farms, patterns — vineyards that have been tended for generations. The land that has been husbanded. People, too, but in set portraits.

Music — Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" has been my nr 1 since the early 1970s. Moody Blues' "Days of Future Past" Clapton's "Layla" — Beatles still are a hit.

There are two kinds of photographers (artists). One gets better through hard work, determination and learning more from the multitudes of failures than the infrequent successes. The other, a far smaller subset, have an inherent talent and vision that seems to be effortless. For them, it's not so much about learning as it is about doing. The Turnley brothers are the latter. They're amazing as individuals, but even moreso as equally talented siblings. As a young photojournalist in the mid-80's, I considered them both inspirations.

As for where I am at, in the photographic here and now? I'm sorta stuck on the b/w agricultural landscape near where I live in North Dakota. The simplicity of the landscape is relaxing and calming to me. Almost opposite to the day to day workload I endure.

I responded before I clicked through the Turnley Bros. photos. I'm wih you Mike........that is some extraordinary photography. They turned the camera on themselves and surroundings and nailed it. I have a friend who did some photo work in his 20's in Mexico and other places that is quite similar. He never ever came close to that again and never really tried.

As far as the music goes, I grew up on a steady diet of classic rock and morphed into a jangle pop with teeth fan. Talking heads,Television Feelies etc. I have a strong connection with The Who and The Police as well as The Clash. Was very into REM early on as well as most of the stuff from Athens (Pylon, Love Tractor etc.) as well as the North Carolina pop of The DB's and Let's Active. SST records was superb in it's day and Alex Chilton is still maybe the coolest white man to ever walk the earth.

Lately I have been listening to a bunch of weirdo minimalist junk again.

I think Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Ass Ponys and Broken Social Scene are the greatest bands of the last decade or so.

Where do I live? That is an interesting question to ask of someone who grew up as a camp follower. I guess the things that fascinate me most have to do with people and place. I am interested in the place where I find myself, and the people who are part of that place. This has to do with living a rootless existence in my early life.

Imagine growing up surrounded by the grand beauty of the unspoiled Utah landscape in the middle of the last century. Then imagine being part of the religious community common to that area.

Now imagine you are a thirteen year old boy who gets on an airplane one morning and then finds himself on the side of a road in Central Luzon watching an Easter procession. Imagine being sprayed with the blood of people acting out the passion right in front of you.

Finally imagine you are a fourteen-year-old boy in 1965, working as a volunteer in a military hospital in the Philippines. The Viet Nam was has just started to heat up and you are caring for some of the first American casualties. Further imagine the look in the eyes of the young soldier barely older than you who has just flown across the South China Sea without his right leg.

People and place matter to me. The photographs I make today are informed by my life experience. One day I hope to be good enough at photography to express my vision.

Mark Rothko. Okay, he's not a photographer, but some years back when I was taking art classes at the local U., my painting instructor suggested I look at him (Rothko, not the instructor). Bang on target. I love his color field paintings. I like other color field painters as well, but no one hits me like Rothko. I also found, while at school, I kept signing up for every kind of studio art but photography. And the drawing, painting and sculpture classes I took subsequently changed and expanded my photography. Like Mike's example with music, which photographers seems to be big for me changes at different periods. Recently it was Shinzo Maeda's beautifully textured landscape photography. Right now I don't seem to have anybody like that, except maybe James Turrell. Ok right, he's not a photographer, either.

As a kid (in the mid 70's), I remember going to a buddy's house and hearing jazz and big band coming out of the basement. His old man used to sit around listening to his vinyl collection of music that was probably 30 years old with a smoke and beer. Fast forward to the present, you might me in the basement listening to an old Genesis or Beatles album. Damn that stuff could be 40 years old. There might be a mix of Coltrane and the Donna's in there too. A mixture of cd's and vinyl played through a tube preamp.

Most of my day to day photography is through older rangefinder stuff and I am taking a stab at large format (vinyl). For family stuff a Contax T2 and maybe a digital POS for convenience (cd's).

Mike,
You might like the work of Ian MacEachern.
Having seen many of the locations and remembering the times, I find his photos hit me where I live.
Ian's website: http://www.ianmaceachern.com/index.html

I live in the large format portrait world. I stare daily at great portraits made by Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Curtis, Dorthea Lange and others that hang on my walls and in my books. My 4x5" box with Cooke lens patiently waits on its tripod in my bedroom for its next face to capture. It has always felt like butter on my fingers when I clean the goop from the Polaroid negatives after a shoot. My world is about to change to Fuji film and Ilford DD-X and I will really miss the goop.

I think I'm homeless. But that's probably because I haven't settled in anywhere yet - I've only owned a camera for about 2 years. So I've spent some time in a lot of places...nature photography, studio work, travel, street scenes, B+W, color, print making (inkjet). I'm not sure I'll find a home, but I think I'll really enjoy looking...

I grew up in Fort Wayne and am back there again after spending a couple years in New Mexico. The Turnleys went to the same high school I did and had the same photography teacher. Mr. Goss was the art teacher at Elmhurst High in Ft. Wayne back in the 60's when my parents went there, he was there in the 70's when the Turnley twins went there, and he was there in the early 90's when I was a student there. He's in his 80's and still teaches there today. I went to visit him a couple weeks ago and he is still enthusiastic about teaching art and photography. He's got his students now shooting digital and using Photoshop!

Anyway, about where I live as a photographer....mostly 645 black and white film, but in recent years I have shot a lot of color after buying a couple of D-SLRs to play with a few yrs ago, and I do a lot of 35mm black and white too for my more documentary work. My work is about the people and places where I live.

I haven't really settled, neither when it comes to photography nor when it comes to where I actually live.

Documentary photography appeals to me, especially the work of Sune Jonsson, a photographer who never chased after the exotic and foreign and instead stuck to the kind of people and places he knew. Photographers who just takes pretty pictures just make me yawn.

Frankly I would not like to know exactly were I will be in six months. And since I am in my early 20s that is maybe how it should be.

I'm always glad to see the train photographers come out of the wood work once in a while. I've been into photographing trains for many years now, and that was my path into photography. At first it was mostly about the trains, and now it's mostly about the photography.

I always wonder how many photographers start out this way with the subject leading and the craft following behind. A strong fascination with the subject matter (first trains and eventually industrial landscapes and other subjects) was always my inspiration to improve my photographic skills and to hone my artistic approach.

As an aside if you live in the Chicago area, there's even an Annual Conference for photographers interested in rail subjects:

I aways lamented that I didn't live in the Rockies or other West Coast landscape meccas, but to save my santity, I decided to really check out my own "backyard" and stop complaining. I like the work of the last photographer whose work that I liked:). However, I've learned to use a bald sky and mundane terrain thanks to David Plowden, as well as the fading past. I've learn to appreciate dark scenic pictures, as long as there is a reason to look into them, thanks to Paul Caponigro. Now, if I can just get my wife to take over the flower pictures (they're her flowers!), I'll be where I live.

Me, I guess I am a nomad. This winter I was surprised to find myself shooting fifth grade girls' basketball every Saturday morning. (My daughter's team, of course.) It's hard to show things like how high you have to jump to sink a free throw when you aren't yet five feet tall, and how fierce these kids can get when the objective is to steal the ball. here's one: http://www.pbase.com/skirkp/image/93017473
I'm still working on getting a good "high five" shot. Maybe someday I will find that I have a style, but in the mean time I keep finding things I want to show and people that I can share them with.

To Chris and any other train photography buffs, if you've never had the opportunity to visit Roanoke, Virginia, headquarters of the former Norfolk and Western, you owe it to yourself to go. The old passenger station, across the street from the Hotel Roanoke, contains a state-of-art museum dedicated to the N&W train photography of O. Winston Link. The several hundred 16x20 photos with accompanying text and audio present a wonderful picture of life along the N&W in the closing days of steam. While Link started with the intention of photographing the steam locomotives, he quickly discovered that the real story was in the people who worked the lines or lived along them in the rural communities of Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. It's a fantastic chance to see these remarkable photos in person. The books are fine, but nothing like the real thing.

I live smack bang in the middle of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, and to relax I grab my large format camera and some film and head off into it. wander aimlessly looking for my next intimate landscape. I can't resist the urge when it is raining or shrouded in mist.

Lately my blood has been boiling with the human figure and intimate portraits. A new love has developed. So now when there is a spare moment in the diary I am madly trying to hook up with my growing pool of models and muses.

I hadn't really identified this as my passion till developing my last 6 months of images led me to only a handful of landscapes and huge pile of figures. Sometimes your passion just finds you, so don't argue with it, and run with it to see where it takes you.

I grew up listening to Miles, Weather Report, and Mozart, so for me the one common link is keeping the vision and expression paramount regardless of the tools or methods used.

I'm a landscape photographer in the Hudson Valley, so I focus on my "backyard" with whatever digital gear gives me the greatest freedom and results. That inevitably changes over time, but hopefully the purpose stays the same. Thanks for another thought provoking question!

The McClellan Steet photographs are wonderful. I can relate to the style and beautiful images of working class proud people. It reminds me of another young photographer from this era, me.

After my Navy tour which ended in 1973, I returned home to my hometown, a small mining community in Western Pennsylvania, several cameras in hand, the area was poor and depressed but the people living there did not know it (at least the kids didn't) and I too shot a lot of images in the small town where my parents lived and I grew up. I had 4 younger brothers that were still at home and I had a very creative year photographing them and their friends.

I left after a year to pursue my education outside the state. To this day, I regret not pursuing my greatest passion, photography. After many years of being separated from that passion, I am again trying to revive that spark of creativity, in the digital age, it is fun again.

Love the photographs and it reminds me of my old portfolio, that I did for my photojournalism class at a local University, I got an A in that course, I should have continued down that path.

Thanks for the posting on this. I check in here at least once a day and love your site. Yours is one of the best sites on the web for photography, if not the best.

OK, you're out there on a limb. 15 years ago, likely even 10 years ago, I'd have said you hit the nail on the head. I don't think that's still the case.

Frankly, I'm bored with dye transfer. It still makes prints as gorgeous as ever, but it no longer excites me. After doing it for 33 years, that's probably not an unreasonable way to feel, but I'm ready to move on.

If it were just up to my artistic inclinations, I'd stop doing it tomorrow. Unfortunately, the world is conspiring against me that way; the past couple of years, doing dye transfer printing for others has provided the lion's share of my income. I'd be a fool to walk away from that. But somewhere between 90 and 99% of all the dye transfer printing I've done in the last several years has been for other clients; I simply don't have a strong inclination to print for myself.

To stretch the metaphor brutally, dye transfer printing is where I reside, but I can no longer say it's where I LIVE. I'd like that to be digital printing. Large format, preferably, and it's where I plan to move. Real Soon Now.

Abandoned buildings or places. Sometimes I will risk life and limb, snakes and spiders to investigate abandoned houses. The very best examples are very old structures that haven't been vandalized or used by people as "party" places. These are often hidden by jungle overgrowth.
I was fortunate once to come across an entire settlement, of apparent permanent intent - the houses were concrete - but which was in parlous repair, all the roofs had been removed presumably to prevent re-habitation, and still had so many items of human existence and daily life, strewn amongst the wreckage. Pictures, toys, clothes, detritus.
I have to admit, since this a photography question, that I am sometimes too overwhelmed to take too many photographs, by the atmosphere and questions that old buildings raise - who lived there, why is it derelict, will it ever be rebuilt, or and very pertinently out here in Malaysia, how long before the jungle completely reclaims it. But I always do a few, as records or notes rather than attempts at art.
Just writing this is inspiring me to go somewhere local and get shooting!

For me, it's large-format landscape photography (specifically intimate landscape). Someone once said of ocean yacht-racing that it's like standing under a cold shower tearing up £50 notes. LF landscape photography is more like standing on a cold, windy hillside letting fivers flutter away into the breeze...

Digital is cheaper, it's much easier and hiking with a DSLR won't break your back. Digital makes so much more sense on almost every level - which is why I rarely use a digital camera. Call it willful perversity, if you like. :-)

I live in the Czech Republic, somewhat physically and definately photographically. I am a big fan of Sudek, Drtikol, and Funke...as a friend of mine said, it takes about a minute to realise how little one knows about light and composition after studying their work. (I said he must be a little dim - it took me 30 seconds). That said, my house is fairly roomy: landscape, street stuff and village stuff, trying to capture what is still there from earlier times as the country rushes to modernise itself. Anyone who likes massive industrial complexes and brownfields has plenty subject. And there's lots of good beer.

Setting aside all the photographers I admire almost unconditionally (Jem Southam, Raymond Moore, Harry Callahan, Josef Koudelka -- the list is long), I find myself increasingly turned on by "found" photographs, especially small b&w family snaps that offer a glimmer of some joyous mystery, especially where the magic is accidental or unintended. Photographers like Raymond Meeks, Keith Carter or Sally Mann come close to working this territory, but somehow the intention undermines the effect. I think it's got something to do with many happy hours spent as a kid rooting through a sack of old family photos...

Musically, despite a wide-ranging journey (currently composer Kimmo Hakola and guitarist Bill Frisell), I keep coming home to classic 50s rock'n'roll and 60s Atlantic soul (jukebox music), perhaps for very similar reasons. As Walter Pater said, all art aspires to the condition of Aretha Franklin.

I'm not going to tell you where I live. The reason is that there is this aspect of modern life that I want to document, but that I have not been able to do properly, so far. I come back to it now and then and never get it right. I don't want to tell anyone what it is because if I do they'll probably give me the web site of someone who has done it already and better. Then I won't have anything left to do and I'll have to change hobby, maybe take up collecting or something, and I don't want to do that.

"Maybe someday I will find that I have a style, but in the mean time I keep finding things I want to show and people that I can share them with."

That seems the most honest way to start, to me. That's probably where I am too. As a mountaineer of course it's landscapes for me, but having trained as an engineer I prefer my roots and rocks to have explanations.

And so it happens that I live in a physical geography textbook...

I don't mean heinously involved captions, I mean pictures of krummholz birches that make you want to join their struggle, of glacial erratics that narrate their incongruity, of steppe that makes you want to swig vodka and chase Napoleon back to Paris...

Sometimes I live in the park with a dslr. Sometimes in the center of town with a 35mm and B&W film and sometimes you can find me it the beat up towns far removed from modern metro areas. In these towns any camera is a good choice.

Just like your featured commentator, Chris, I live for railroad photography. Been doing it since childhood, along the old Chicago and North Western tracks across the street from my Fox Point, Wis., postwar suburban home. Have to admit, though, that unlike the late great Gary Benson, I still mindlessly drop back to that classic wedge shot. But I keep working to capture other views.

I could always count on my native state, Wisconsin, for landscape photo material. The thing I love about Wisconsin is its subtle beauty. E.g. the Baraboo "mountain" range north of Madison that is not endless as seen in the east or sky-high as in the west, but rising abruptly from the Wisconsin River floodplain stands alone and is majestic. The Lake Michigan shoreline seen from I-43 and various local roads north of Milwaukee has a pristine and serene beauty with blues and greens that the Atlantic and Pacific lack. The upper Mississippi valley; the rugged terrain of Upper Michigan (okay, not Wisconsin), and yes, even the "big flats" of Adams County, all have a unique beauty that I'll never grow tired of seeing and shooting.

But my latest love has been a most unlikely area - Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and surrounding environs. Have made four trips there during this decade and hope to make more. A variety of disconnected reasons: 1) went there in high school as part of a meeting of a junior Masonic club known as Demolay, and was astounded that north of the imaginary 49th parallel line (where the world ended, according to the typical geography instruction I got in grade school, and how I maintain most US citizens still see the world) there was actually a vibrant city and civilization. I'd never seen anything so totally flat (made even Indiana and Illinois look like they had some topography), and that had a beauty of its own. 2) Got my hands on a photo book produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1976 as that country's bicentennial present to the USA, showing landscape and people scenes along our shared border from Alaska/Yukon Territory on the Arctic Ocean to Maine/New Brunswick on the Atlantic. All sorts of fascinating quirks in that book - e.g. the tiny tip of a peninsula south of Vancouver that crosses the 49th parallel, and is therefore a part of of the USA - Port Roberts, Wash., recently likened to a "gated community" (with customs officers as the gatekeepers) in National Geographic. But the most fascinating photo of all was one of the prairie on the border around Emerson, Manitoba, Pembina, N.D. and Noyes, Minn. It was the best illustration of our international boundary being an imaginary construct, geographically speaking. No river, no mountain crest, no road, fence, sign or anything. No clear-cut swath of forest as demarcates the border through wooded areas of the Rockies and Maine. Just ... flat land. Since reading that book, I've been fascinated with capturing my own photos along the border, and esp. the Manitoba / N.D. / Minn. frontier. 3) To bring it home - there's fantastic railroading action around Winnipeg, where the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific converge on their cross-country routes. Lots of wide prairie scenes, and two iconic passenger trains - VIA Rail Canada's "Canadian," the continent's last scheduled train (vs. tour or chartered train) with true dome cars (not like Amtrak's "Superliner" lounge cars with no forward visibility), and a four-to-five-car local train (with diner and sleeping car) that runs from Winnipeg to Churchill, on the shore of Hudson Bay. And finally 4) beautiful Lake Winnipeg north of its namesake city, with lovely beaches. Who'da thunk it? (unless you were brought up there...)

I'm attracted to stress -- I most enjoy shooting when there's something going on. But then, when the stress level rises high enough, I stop shooting and just enjoy the stress itself...8-) That generally means that I like photojournalism. The thing I don't like about PJ is that there's usually no sense of composition to the photos, so they don't qualify (for me) as art. I really think that art has to have a structure, a certain kind of poise, that combines color and line and shading into a complete statement, sufficient in itself, aside from any subject matter.

I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago that I think James Nachtwey is a terrific photographer, because he combines all that stuff -- action and structure, violence and art, movement and composition. I'm in my sixties and I have looked pretty intensively at photography and art since I worked in a school darkroom almost 50 years ago, and I have to say that I am now rarely, rarely surprised or pulled into a photograph, because most photographs simply restate something that has not been stated only once before, but thousands or millions of times. This blog has an ad for a website that features nude photos of young women (including the goofily attractive woman in the opening ad, a woman of the type I always chased-after as a kid) and while I haven't subscribed, I get the impression that there are quite literally thousands of nudes on that site. There's another big photo-posting site that gathers photos into categories (landscapes, children, wildlife, nudes, etc.) and I once calculated that there are never less than 3,000 nudes on that site at any one time, and that dozens are added each day, from all over the world, all races and shapes and sizes in every conceivable pose. So after you've seen a thousand, or ten thousand, or fifty thousand nudes, what's going to surprise you or interest you? In photography, somehow, it seems to me that we've reached a point where "posed" photography -- full landscapes, portraits, still lifes, intimate landscapes, have lost their power, because we are too saturated with images. That's why I'm coming around to the belief that in our era, and going forward, lasting art will only be crafted (in photography) as part of a meaningful sequence of action that is not created only for art's sake. It will *be* art, but the subjects will not self-consciously be participating in the creation of it. (Think of the Impressionists -- the people in the boats on the Seine were not paddling around to become art, but were made art.)

Jeff Wall tries to do this, but fails because in the end, his pieces are artificial; to succeed in a lasting way, IMHO, he needs to bring the same rigor to spontaneous scenes.

So where I live, in photography, is in movement and in authenticity. And when you think about photographs that the mass of people accept as "great," I believe most of them have the element of spontaneity in them, as well as the structure. (Moonrise, Running White Deer, the best HCB shots, the raising of the flag at Iwo, Capa's soldier shot in Spain. Look up the photo of the execution of the Vietcong by the Vietnamese police chief, and do an analysis of the structure, ignoring the subject matter. You will find that it is as formally structured as a Renaissance painting, even if the photographer did not intend it to be so.)

None of this applies to painting or sculpture, where I think the opportunities for originality and serious insight reman unabated.

Jeff Mermelstein taught me my first intro to photography course, so my love of photography has been informed by an appreciation for quirky street photography such as that of Winogrand, Friedlander, Levitt and, of course, Mermelstein.

BTW, Jeff has a couple of books out too: "Sidewalk" and "No Title Here".

Street. 35mm b/w in-your-face. I feel no restrictions. Never ask. HCB, Winogrand, Friedlander, Mermelstein are dabblers. Klein was a beacon, before he started to wear off.
I'm up to prove the bold statement.

This is such a great post. I've really been trying to figure out where I live, and I find I like nothing more than wandering around at night and taking street-light illuminated shots of buildings, windows, telephone poles, etc. The fact I live in an extremely dense urban area (Taipei) with lots of interesting signage helps, but I was feeling a bit odd for always photographing "weird" stuff. But that's ok, and I think the fact that that is where I physically live makes a difference. I love the density and the urban environment, and I don't think it's a surprise my photography lives there as a result.

Egrets. Big ones, little ones, gray/blue ones.
Crowds of them harvesting; the solitary one stalking; the one so far away from where you would expect. Egrets, a wonderfully murderous, truly efficient, fish killing bio-machine. There is a bird sanctuary/marshy preserve bay park right across the street from where I work and I take my Canon and long telephoto L glass every day for a short walk (10 minutes) before work to the same spot and back. The 1st 10,000 photos were fun, the next 10,000 I was starting to get worried and wonder what was I really doing, and the 10,000 I am working on now are starting to penetrate what it really is like to be an egret and knowing what he is going to do next and thus be prepared to capture a bird shot that is about that bird and not the record of the bird. I know this sounds pretty weird,(does to me at least), and it isn't something I set out to do but just like you can wake up and wonder about having spent 35 years being an auto mechanic, so too can there be 1000s of egret pictures that are curious.
Where I live and breathe is a house in a redwood grove on a bluff overlooking the pacific ocean by a little river. The most beautiful spot on Earth (to me). I know that I am still sane, because I do take pictures of other things also.